A Response To Women Regarding Starling’s “Schrödinger’s Rapist”
A respected friend of mine (who happens to be a feminist) sent me a link to “Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced.” I wouldn’t have read the article at all, had it not been for the recommendation from my friend. After reading it and stewing on it, I’m going to respond. I’m responding not only to the author, but more so to the women who identify with the post itself.
In this blog post, I want to do what I feel Phaedra Starling failed to do. I’m going to attempt to talk about this topic across the gender line. It took me 4 different sessions to read her blog post from start to finish. The first few times, indignation overtook me. I suspect I’m not alone as the comments appear to have been heavily moderated before being closed.
To openly express my full and complete opinion on this piece would likely serve to infuriate and enrage a feminist audience as much as this piece infuriated and enraged me. This does nothing to establish a dialog or help anyone grow and evolve. Thus, I’m going to attempt to focus on a few core concepts that, while perhaps hard to swallow, might just make it to the mental digestive tracks of those who found Starling’s article to be inspiring. I’m sure it will still be bias, I am human and I’m wrong a lot. Still, I want to speak up here.
Comments on Insult
Before I get constructive, I have to take a few paragraphs to cite a reasons why this article is insulting towards many men.
First, there’s the “you are a good guy” dialog. This is presented in such a way that suggests Starling has some sort of empathy towards men. Almost immediately, it becomes clear that these words are not written in empathy nearly so much as a failed attempt to placate. There’s also the student/teacher metaphor used in the writing. This sets a dominating and oppressive tone towards men. Feminist should know by now that being oppressive is not effective.
Beyond the tone and approach, this piece blatantly promotes the notion that all men are rapists until proven innocent. Rape is a horrible crime and those found guilty of rape are usually strongly punished. However, accusations of false rape often destroy the lives of innocent men. While the damage done to the victim in false charge cases rivals that of rape cases, the punishment for false charge is relatively insignificant. Being falsely accused of rape is a real and terrifying concern for many men. Starling’s approach of openly labeling men as guilty does not help bridge the gap with her supposed audience of men.
Content Analysis
Now that I’ve called attention to the oppressive and threatening components of Starling’s piece, I’ll focus on a constructive analysis of the content itself. I am about to draw a few conclusions based on evidence found in the blog post itself (as quotes).
So far, so good. Miss LonelyHearts, your humble instructor, approves.
There are two take-away items from this line. The first is the voice Starling is speaking from, “Miss LonelyHearts.” While this entire blog post pretends to be targeted at men, I believe it is really written for a world full of “Miss LonelyHearts.” She, Miss LonelyHearts, will be are focus from now on. From now on, we will refer to her as She. Given her name, we form our first plank.
Plank 1: She is lonely.
There is a second take-away item from the line above. This is demonstrated in two parts. The first is the self-given title of instructor. The second is playing the role of deciding approval or disapproval. From this we can take our second plank.
Plank 2: She sees herself as dominant over men.
To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.
“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”
Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones?
Without citing statistics on who the most common victims of violent crime are, lets go directly to drawing information out of this quote. On to another plank.
Plank 3: She’s concerned about violent assault and murder all the time. She fears being assaulted.
Do you follow rules like these?
Yes, I do follow rules, but don’t let me get off track. Miss LonelyHeart has a clear set of rules based on her fear. These rules apply directly to her social behavior.
Plank 4: She has an established set of dating rules.
One in every six American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. … then the concentration of rapists in the population is still a little over one in sixty
This entire paragraph is rich with logistical error (read the original post, or this post or this one, for the omitted content). While she uses these stats to support a fear of strangers, 83.8% of rapes occur from someone the victim knows. Furthermore, Starling mixes sexual assault and rape stats, two distinctly different acts. Starling’s use of poor logic and statistics conveys a much more threatening perspective than reality.
Plank 5: She is willing to delude herself and others to validate her fear.
To begin with, you must accept that I set my own risk tolerance.
This is a demand. While obvious, since we all set our own risk tolerance, this commentary is delivered as a directive.
Plank 6: She wants control.
Those women do not want to be approached, no matter how nice you are or how much you’d like to date them. Okay? That’s their right. Don’t get pissy about it. Women are under no obligation to hear the sales pitch before deciding they are not in the market to buy.
No where is it said in any of our governing documents that we have the right not to be approached. It is their right to not want to be approached, as is inferred by the line “pursuit of happiness.” However, the freedom of speech also gives us the right to speak to anyone in a public place.
Plank 7: She sees control of first contact as a right.
The second important point: you must be aware of what signals you are sending by your appearance and the environment. We are going to be paying close attention to your appearance and behavior and matching those signs to our idea of a threat.
Starling is now saying that She will evaluate you based on how your appearance and behavior rate against her own criteria. Note that Starling specifically says “our idea of threat.” She’s now free to judge a man’s character based on things such as the color of your skin, how wealthy you appear, or if you have the ability to color coordinate.
Plank 8: She passes judgment based on circumstantial evidence.
You are a threat, remember? You are Schrödinger’s Rapist.
Starling consistently reminds her proposed male reader that he is perceived as a threat. However, Starling cleverly leaves out words such as “perceived” and goes directly to blatantaly calling the proposed male reader a rapist.
Plank 9: She perceives all men as threatening.
There’s a man with whom I went out on a single date—afternoon coffee, for one hour by the clock—on July 25th. In the two days after the date, he sent me about fifteen e-mails, scolding me for non-responsiveness. I e-mailed him back, saying, “Look, this is a disproportionate response to a single date. You are making me uncomfortable. Do not contact me again.” It is now October 7th. Does he still e-mail?
Yeah. He does. About every two weeks.
This is one side of a story. It would be unfair to assume too much from the other side. What we do know is that during this date Starling was precise about the time, the date was for coffee, and that there was one date. We also know Starling was scolded for non-responsiveness. Here we can only assume that she was not responding to him. She also expresses frustration when he continues to contact her.
Plank 10: She is upset by men who do no behave the way she wants them to.
You see, Mr. E-mail has made it clear that he ignores what I say when he wants something from me. Now, I don’t know if he is an actual rapist, and I sincerely hope he’s not. But he is certainly Schrödinger’s Rapist, and this particular Schrödinger’s Rapist has a probability ratio greater than one in sixty. Because a man who ignores a woman’s NO in a non-sexual setting is more likely to ignore NO in a sexual setting, as well.
Here we have to be very clever because Starling left out the majority of the story. Even Starling blatantly says she doesn’t know if he is an actual rapist. She makes an assumption based on a man ignoring a woman’s NO. However, and this is the clever part, she never actually says what she said “NO” to. What did this mystery man ask of her? Starling’s only story is about him not following her order to stop contacting her, not that he ever specifically requested anything of her. Why was this omitted from the story? Given Starling’s story, she sets us up for a very troubling plank.
Plank 11: She equates a man not following her orders (to stop contacting her) to rape (NO in a sexual setting).
And each of those messages indicates that you believe your desires are a legitimate reason to override her rights.
This particular line is emphasized with italics in the original text. Again, Starling uses the term “rights”. She weighs the male motivation as “desire” and the female motivation as “rights”. Note that this is in reference to attempting to converse in public with a woman who is not interested. While it is easy to draw a conclusion that a male attempting to pursue a female this way is likely to fail, the use of the term “rights” here is no mistake.
Plank 12: She perceives some of her own desires as personal rights, when there are no laws or scriptures supporting her.
And we’re done.
Building a Picture
Now that we have all of these planks, lets do something with them. Let’s put our planks together: She is a lonely (1), insecure (3), controlling (2,4,6,7,10,12), and delusional (5,8,9,11) woman.
Now, there’s one more crucial bit of information I did not pull from the article because it has nothing to do with She. No, this other bit of information is Him, the guy she’s speaking to (or about) through the whole document. I will skip the lengthy process of quotes and analysis for Him and just straight to it. Him is the guy who is nice, tries hard, is lonely, doesn’t understand women, needs help, gets frustrated, and keeps sending emails and making phone calls when all hope is lost.
Those education in the venetian arts have an acronym for Him: AFC. An AFC is an Average Frustrated Chump. I was, and admittedly in some ways still am, an AFC. In a moment of sheer desperation and utter rejection, I told a woman I desired that I was “a nice guy.” Then I found myself stuck. I was wondering why I would say that. It took a lot of self-honesty and introspection to admit that I wasn’t being nice to be nice, I was being nice to get something in return. I wanted attention, affection, and romance. I was listening to what women told me and being the man they said they wanted in hopes of seeing returns on my investment. I was frustrated, as I’d done everything ever asked, and I was still not being treated the way I wanted to. I was insecure. I had a low self image. I was the man She keeps attracting. I was Him.
In those days, I would have responded to Starling’s post first by empathizing and then by being exactly the man she suggested I should be. I would have done it in an attempt to win her approval, just like in the quote supporting plank 2. And She would never have been attracted to me.
Today, I would avoid Miss LonelyHearts like the plague. The last thing I want in my life is a controlling woman to remind me of what an untrustworthy creature I am. Truth is, I want to have fun before I die. If you’re going to come hang with me, you better be prepared for a wild and crazy ride.
Ladies, those of you who are Miss LonelyHearts, you are still attracting Him, the AFC. Do you find yourselves wondering why you don’t attract men of virility? Do you wonder why the men who approach you turn out to be insecure? Do you feel like they constantly want or need something from you? Is that feeling of neediness what makes you feel threatened?
The man you want knows he has value. The man you want doesn’t need you to validate his self worth. The man you want will never be lured by the concept of rape because he knows he has power over himself – and he knows that’s all he needs.
Miss LonelyHearts will never attract this kind of man. She views his security and confidence as threatening to her own controlling nature. Miss LonelyHearts doesn’t mean to be controlling, it’s just a defensive measure because she’s scared. However, she’s scared because she keeps dwelling on, reading about, talking about, and exposing herself to the things that scare her. In fact, she didn’t even notice the fallacy cited in planks 5, 8, 9, and 11. She’s caught in a downward spiral of blame and fear.
The only way out is to take responsibility and to stop blaming innocent men for your fears. Yes, we men hear your concerns and acknowledge them as legitimate. However, we can’t help you; only you can help you. The only person who will ever bring you a true and reliable sense of security is yourself. Once you find your way through the haze of fear and start living, you will start attracting a different type of man.
When you realize and accept that a decision made from fear is never as powerful as a decision made in love, you will find yourself wading and flowing effortlessly through the seas of the insecure. Instead of oppressing them along the way, walking on them and controlling them, you may find yourself touching them and lifting them up lightly along the way. You might just spread hope.
There are horrible things out there in the world. Don’t let it keep you from experiencing the joy. Wake up. Take responsibility. Love thyself, then love thy sister, and most of all, love thy brother.
This is brilliant… I have felt these things after reading the same article, but couldn’t express them nearly as eloquently.
-A former AFC
Interesting analysis.
However, Ms. Starling did have some valid points in her post. I personally have seen several women who get “jumped” because they have refused to give some guy the time of day. It does happen.
However, my problem with that kind of thinking was that it veered dangerously close to the same kind of discriminatory thinking that victimized African American men in the past and is victimizing Arab people today. When I tried to bring that up, I kept being shot down.
African American men have suffered doubly from being considered criminals and rapists (primarily of young white women), by society. The fact that these feminist bullies tried to discount that fact and and one particular tried to further humiliate a guy who was raped by two women, just caused me a major degree of disgust….
However, overall I liked your analysis of the blog. I didn’t completely agree with it, but I liked it nonetheless.
@Dave – Thank you.
@Demonsthen – I agree 100% that she has a very valid point. I’d say that my criticisms revolve 90% around her delivery. I know a lot of women who do not seem to have this on-going fear of rape, yet still have very valid concerns regarding security – stuff ranging from emotional security to physical safety. I think rape may be being used here as a crutch for a much deeper set of issues… but I can’t know this. Thanks for the comment.
Great, interesting read. Thank you for having written this.
Very well written, I’d read the “Rapist” article and was hoping someone would provide a counterpoint. Imagine what reaction someone would have gotten if they’d written an article “Schrodinger’s Prostitute”, about how all women are potentially prostitutes, since you have no way of knowing if they charge for sex until they’ve had sex with you for free.
@Dan – That’s actually a really interesting point. I think such a writing would be a fantastic exercise. I might take a stab at it myself, but I don’t know that I could do it justice. Someone should though, because I can see the opportunity for a lot of well formed counterpoints. It might also help illustrate why the Rapist piece was so derogatory towards men.
Not only was the article incredibly bigoted against the vast majority of men — who are law-abiding and peaceful, especially concerning sex crimes — but it also fanned a sense of hysteria and excessive alarm about the true threat of rape in Western industrialized countries.
I want to provide everyone with some data about just how often men accused of rape are found to actually be NOT GUILTY of the crime (by police, prosecutors, and/or juries). The rates of non-guilt compared to the sheer amount of rape accusations are staggering. Below are the conviction rates for rape in 8 Western industrialized countries or provinces. Whenever a feminist tries to imply that our culture is swimming in rape victimization, point her to the following data. When you get to the particulars and those privy to the evidence in a PARTICULAR case get their chance to evaluate guilt or lack thereof, it turns out that 85-98 percent of the time, rape allegations fail to result in a conviction. Check it out:
“Cross-National Studies in Crime and Justice” (Sept. 2004)
Authors: David Farrington, Patrick Langan, Michael Tonry
Bureau of Justice Statistics (United States Federal Department of Justice)
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cnscj.pdf
Jurisdictions surveyed were:
1. England (and Wales)
2. Scotland
3. United States
4. Australia
5. Canada
6. Netherlands
7. Sweden
8. Switzerland
They chose the above countries because of the extensive amount of reliable crime data available in such countries at either the federal or provincial level.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
CONVICTION RATES FOR RAPE:
England/Wales:
Conviction rate: <3%
Source: p. 30, figure 4e
Scotland:
Conviction rate: 2%
Source: p. 226, figure 3e
USA:
Conviction rate: 15%
Source: p. 73, figure 5e
Australia:
Conviction rate: 7%
Source: p. 111, figure 5e
Canada:
Conviction rate: 13%
Source: p. 157, figure 3e
Netherlands:
Conviction rate: 5%
Source: p. 190, figure 3e
Sweden:
Conviction rate: <2%
Source: p. 259, appendix table 3
Switzerland:
Conviction rate: 3%
Source: p. 277, figure 4e
@John – Interesting and staggering stats. I’d like to know how many cases are not just thrown out for a lack of evidence, but actually proven to explicitly be false accusations. I feel bad for any woman who is assaulted and then unable to prove the case, and I’m sure that is the case in some of these instances. Still, the damage a false rape claim can cause is staggering. It’s too bad that the punishment for being convicted for false claims is relatively minor in comparison. I’m suspect that the false claims only hurt women with legit claims.
Well, I believe that fabricated allegations are vastly “under-reported.”
@Zaskoda
Feel free to contact me by email if you’d like to discuss ideas, etc. Would love to see this written but I’m not much of a writer.
Great read, both articles really.
Many people live in a world disconnected from reality, they think, “I live in a good neighborhood, I don’t have to worry about rape. This doesn’t happen to me, or in my neighborhood.” (or murder, or robbery, or other violence)
The fact is often times people believe that these are things that you do need to be concerned about until it is too late, these things do happen and can happen anywhere that other people are. The reason is because other people are the leading cause of all violent acts, if you don’t believe me look up the stats. ;)
However you can’t live you life thinking that everyone you meet may do you harm, unless the people you meet show intent to do you harm. The Schrödinger’s Rapist article is a bit off putting, she encourages women to think of all men as potential rapist without real threat or cause. I wonder what has happened to her to put her into this state of mind, was she raped or a victim of some other form of violence? If so, does she understand how her awareness of her surrounds leading up to the violence may have contributed to her victimization?
Just like predators in the wild , criminals pray upon the weak. They don’t attack everyone that crosses their path. They attack the prey that looks to be easy.
I use the following for situation awareness, which I learned about a few years ago, but I’ve been practicing far longer.
Condition White
Completely unaware of your surroundings. People should only be in this condition if asleep.
Condition Yellow
This is a relaxed condition, and should be the primary condition that most people are in. You are aware of your surroundings, entrances, exits and other people.
Condition Orange
This is the potential threat condition, you are aware of a potential threat. While driving this might be the car in the next lane that has has slowed down. On a street at night this is when someone is approaching you, but hasn’t shown a weapon or intent. This is when you observe the potential threat and determine if any action needs to be taken. This is when you look at the situation and determine what you will need to to if things go bad. Doing this now allows you to plan rationally rather than based on a fear response.
Condition Red
Observation has revealed that someone/something is a real threat and action must now be taken. Things are going bad. Take action immediately to avoid a confrontation or put yourself into a position of power going into a confrontation.
Condition Black
It’s life or death. If you reach this condition without passing through the other stages then you will most likely die or become a victim of some other violence.
Here is a good article covering the color code.
http://www.teddytactical.com/SharpenBladeArticle/4_States%20of%20Awareness.htm
Phenominal. Your use of logic there was inspiring.
This is what I wrote in response to the original article before noticing the comments were closed.
Wow….this is nuts. How can you people honestly live like this? I am 5’4″, 115 pounds, and old enough to have a son in college. I have never lived my life in fear. I don’t lock my door, I don’t lock my car door, I don’t usually fear walking in the dark alone. Sure, on occasion I have had moments of fear, but rarely.
We live in the safest part of the world, and American white women are the safest group in the country. I would be far more afraid if I were a black man, as they are statistically most likely to be assaulted. Women are far less likely to be assaulted than men. Do men walk around in fear? No. Why not?
Because we have blown rape into such the antichrist that women fear it more than being murdered. We think it is ok that men get assaulted and murdered more because it is not rape. Well, guess what? A person who is beaten to the edge of death or killed would beg to differ (if they could).
Certainly there is common sense of don’t put yourself in obviously dangerous situations, but men should think the same way. There is a difference between choosing not to go into a secluded downtown area alone at 3 am, and looking at all men as rapists.
All men are not potential rapists, no more than all women are potential child abusers (a concern of which, according to your metric, all men should be afraid). Looking at the world through rape colored glasses makes you afraid, nothing less, nothing more.
*end of comment*
I wish the women there would read all this. I was amazed at how many women were honestly terrified of being raped, as if at any given moment 1 in 6 women were currently being raped. That sort of hysteria is what fuels feminism, the rape fear culture, and keeps them from using higher thought to not only put the threat into perspective but to actually do anything about it. Oh, and sells a lot of Cosmo’s as well as generating lots of feedback for poorly written blogs.
To be honest, being afraid all the time doesn’t stop them from getting assaulted, it only makes them afraid. It keeps them from fully enjoying life and ironically makes them subjugated to men (or their idea of men.) Go feminism. And people look at ME funny when I say I am an MRA!
While I thought the author of the original article was extreme in her viewpoints and overly simplistic in her conclusions, I think you are missing her basic point which was that a woman has no way of knowing if the man who is speaking with her may rape her until he actually tries to rape her and, by then, she may unable to prevent the rape from occurring. I realize that this is unfair to all men, but honestly, the way to change this is not to tell women to get over being raped or to quibble over the statistics or to not judge all men by the bad apples. The way to change it is to acknowledge that rape is wrong, always, and to speak out against rape apologists. Don’t tell or laugh at rape jokes. Look at all the commenters to this post who suggest that women lie about being raped (yeah, it happens, and notice how much media attention those cases get in relation to how much media attention a rape gets, especially if the victim is poor or a member of a minority group) and insist that women shouldn’t live in fear of being raped (this in direct contrast to a pervasive belief in our society that a woman who wears sexy clothes, walks alone at night, talks to strange men, flirts, etc. is “asking for it” if she gets raped–http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2010/02/15/2010-02-15_many_women_think_rape_victims_are_to_blame_for_what_happened_to_them_according_t.html). I am assuming most of the commenters are men who believe that a woman should feel safe with them, but given the attitudes they have towards woman who are raped, women who fear being raped, and feminists, they don’t provide much evidence that they are, in fact, safe to be around.
@alimum – I did not miss her basic point; her basic point is both offensive and dangerous. The very notion of assuming an entire demographic to be guilty until proven innocent is considered to be offensive in all cases except when applied against the male gender. Do you support a police officer who questions the black people at a crime scene first because he was once mugged and beaten by a black person? And to your other point about false rape claims, the staggering amount of false claims go largely ignored by the media and, more importantly, relatively unpunished by the law. I believe that women who claim false rape do more to hurt women in general than any rapist ever has. The punishment for conviction of a false rape claim should be exactly the same punishment as a conviction for the rape itself.
It is a breath of fresh air to read a blog that is not promoting fear as a means to increase their readership.
I think the rape accusation vs. rape conviction data is a bit misleading since rape is difficult to prove. For all we know, 95% of the cases thrown out were on insufficient evidence where a rape actually took place. We simply don’t know.
“However, she’s scared because she keeps dwelling on, reading about, talking about, and exposing herself to the things that scare her.”
I feel like you did a terrific job of summarizing many feminist blogs with this line.
I only recently discovered this controversy, which seems to be rather old at this point. Your post in particular caught my attention for certain reasons. To be specific:
1) I don’t understand how you reach the conclusion that Miss LonelyHearts is seeking domination and control. She is asking that her right to choose with whom she will interact be respected. This is a right that you probably take for granted. After all, do you think you have an obligation to hear out a telemarketer that calls your house or read every piece of junk mail you get? Of course not. A woman has the right to determine the degree to which she will allow you to participate in her life. We men have that same right vis-a-vis women, but since random women we meet are significantly less likely to test that right (which is not to say it doesn’t happen), we’re more likely to take it for granted. What degree of interaction are women required to allow random men so as to avoid being controlling under your definition? How is refusing to interact with you oppressive? From where I see it, a woman is no more oppressing anyone by refusing advances or flirtation than you would be to me if you refused to sell me your car.
2) I’m not in a particularly good position to judge whether Starling’s fear of being raped, sexually assaulted, or groped is reasonable, since I’m a man and it doesn’t typically occur to me to worry about these things. I can say that my wife has had a dirty homeless man aggressively paw at her on a train while calling her beautiful. She found this experience understandably unpleasant, the compliment notwithstanding. What’s more, while a lot of women I know have at least one story (frequently more than one story) of an experience like this, virtually no man I know has. This suggests to me that I shouldn’t be surprised that most women are less willing to take chances with their safety in public than I am.
3) She is not accusing anyone of being a rapist. Nor is she suggesting that legal or punitive measures be taken against any man. She is saying that she doesn’t know whether a random man is a rapist and she has no more obligation to take the chances on that than you do to take the chance that your bike won’t get stolen if you leave it outside unlocked.
4) Why do you have a problem with her asking a man in whom she is not interested to stop contacting her? Does she have a moral obligation to keep taking his calls or responding to his emails? Both men and women have the right to terminate a relationship at any time, for any reason or no reason. Think about it, if someone you don’t like and don’t want to talk to keeps calling you, do you have an obligation to speak to them?
5) If Starling is confusing sexual assault and rape stats, so what? She probably sees both as strongly undesirable. If you tell a woman that, no she doesn’t have a 1/6 chance of being raped, only sexually assaulted, she’s not going to be very reassured.
6) Your assumptions about what Starling wants sexually have no real basis in anything in her essay. The only thing we know about her tastes in men is that she doesn’t like men who breach her personal boundaries, boundaries she believes she has the right to establish. You seem to think that her right to establish personal boundaries is more limited; again, I’d like to know where you think those boundaries ought to be.
What worries me about your argument is that it suggests that people shouldn’t have the right to establish personal boundaries and don’t have the right to choose the circumstances or intensity of their interactions with you. If Starling is being unreasonable, what would be reasonable?
You also talk at length about how you’ve changed so as to be an “average frustrated chump” no longer. Does that require making advances on or pestering people who don’t want to talk to you?
@Thegoodman – Thank you.
@Eric – It’s been a while since I revisited the context of this blog post. I will do my best to address your points.
1) My use of the words “domination” and “control” were specifically regarding her use of the teacher/student metaphor. If I suggest you are a student and I am a teacher, what does that imply about my perception of your knowledge, understanding, and ability to add value to the conversation?
2) There is some validity to your point here, but it becomes a problem with this point is used to support a pattern of victimization. I have been sexually assaulted on more than one occasions including having a female manager grope me while working on a ladder. It didn’t bother me, and if I had filed a complaint it would have most likely been laughed at. Reverse the genders, and it could have been a law suit. Many women use false rape claims against men for malicious intent. The percentage of rape claims that fall into this category have been shown to be at least 20% and possibly as high as 60%.
3) She is justifying her behavior with the false fear that all men are rapists. She can behave however she wants. However, spreading this mentality as somehow acceptable is damaging to our overall social structure much the same way as saying it’s ok to assume all women are manipulative and materialistic. Some are, but not all… and it’s horribly unfair to the ones who are not to treat this as if they are. All you accomplish is hurting those who have chosen to be better.
4) I don’t have a problem with anyone terminating relationships if they choose and don’t see where in my writings you would have thought otherwise. If I said something to suggest this, please point it out so I can address it…
5) You’re missing one of the most important points completely. If you’re going to use statistical evidence to back up a point, it is unethical to knowing skew those numbers in favor of your argument. What she presented is a gross misrepresentation of the facts and there are thousands of eager readers who will consume that information without verification and use it to justify their own victim patterns.
6) You seem to be projecting things I never said. What would be reasonable is for her to :
1) Verify her statistics before presenting them to a mass audience (a sensitive audience) as facts
2) Stop blaming men for the way she treats men. If this were race based instead of gender based, we’d never accept it. If she were to say she was scared of any black person that approached her because a black person mugged her, we would not discuss this issue the way we are now.
3) Spend some time evaluating why she is attracting the kind of men she is attracting instead of making broad assumptions and accusations about all men.
And, finally, no… You can’t attract a woman by pestering her when she doesn’t want to talk to you. That was a pretty dumb question.
Zaskoda, my response:
1) “Domination” and “control” just didn’t seem like particularly useful words in this situation to me. Maybe it’s a matter of opinion, but if I think of someone as dominating or controlling me, I think of them doing something coercive to me that limits my freedom of action. I didn’t feel dominated or controlled by anything Starling wrote.
2) I don’t think she is talking about being victimized, she’s talking about preventing being victimized. I don’t doubt that you have been sexually assaulted (although the fact that it didn’t bother you is hard for me to understand – to me, the fact that someone’s action toward me bothers me is a definitional component of that action being an assault). There is no escaping the conclusion, however, that sexual assault happens to women a lot more than it happens to men. She isn’t saying that women ought to live paralyzed in fear, only that women have reason to take more precautions in their interactions with strangers than men do.
3) She NEVER suggests that all men are rapists. She does make the true assertion that a certain subset of men (which she quite clearly believes is a minority of men) are rapists and that she has no way of knowing any given man is a rapist when he interacts with her. This means that she will take certain reasonable precautions in dealing with him until she knows him better.
4) It is very difficult for me to imagine how fifteen emails in two days after a single date containing scolds for non-responsiveness is reasonable. Maybe she drugged his drink and stole his wallet? But scenarios in which what he is doing is reasonable seem pretty far-fetched. She was actually quite clear about what she said “no” to – she said no to further contact. He continues to contact her anyway. By saying that we don’t have both sides of the story, you are suggesting that she has to justify her demand that he stop contacting her. This heavily implies that you don’t think she has the right to terminate this relationship for any reason she wants. By the way, she doesn’t use this guy as a means of making generalities about all men. In fact, she compares the guy with the cockroach tattoos favorably to this chap. What she is doing is perfectly reasonable – she is making an individualized conclusion about an individual man based on his individual behavior. Isn’t that what you want women to do?
5) You are absolutely correct that she conflates sexual assault and rape. This was careless on her part and a valid criticism can be made of this. However, it doesn’t affect the validity of her advice or conclusions. If we replace all instances of “rape” and “rapist” with “sexual assault” and “sexual assaulter,” it doesn’t cause any of her advice to men here to be unreasonable. The fact that rape is worse than non-rape forms of sexual assault doesn’t make sexual assault any less undesirable.
6)2) Nothing about the way Starling treats men is pathological or unreasonable. Her demands amount to 1) don’t sexually assault me; 2) don’t contact me when I ask you not to contact me; and 3) don’t pester me when my body language signals I want to be left alone. She is not saying that men don’t have a right to occupy the same public spaces as women. She is not saying that she has the right to pepper spray you if she isn’t in the mood to talk to you. And she is definitely not accusing all men of being rapists. My whole point is that Starling never makes an unreasonable behavioral demands, but your strongly negative reaction to what she says leads me to wonder whether you disagree. If she is making an unreasonable demand, I want to know what, specifically, you think it is.
You make the entirely unfounded assumption at the end of your essay that Starling’s real problem is that she is attracting average frustrated chumps. Aside from Mr. Email, she doesn’t tell us anything about her tastes in men or the type she is generally attracting. The only conclusions we can draw are that she doesn’t like rapists and she doesn’t like men who violate her boundaries.
And yes, individuals have a right to choose not to interact with someone on the basis of race. It’s not nice or commendable behavior, but it’s an individual choice. If Starling refused to interact with Asian men (like myself), I would think less of her and call her a racist, but I wouldn’t deny her the right to make that choice. In fact, she would be doing me a favor because I wouldn’t want to interact with a racist. If she were an employer engaging in discrimination on those grounds, it would be another story. But she is an individual and individuals have the right to make irrational choices about personal interactions.
6)3) This is probably the most disturbing statement you make this entire exchange. It is men’s responsibility not to be rapists and creeps, not her responsibility not to attract rapists and creeps. If a female friend of yours has been date raped, do you ask her to spend time evaluating why she attracted a rapist? I would hope not.
And yes, asking whether pestering a woman who doesn’t want to talk to you is a good strategy for attracting women ought to be a dumb question. Unfortunately, your essay is the one that prompted it.
Eric – I’m sorry, I just don’t care enough to argue with you anymore.
So, what I think to be the central issue in this man/woman/safety/rights thing is that the male sex drive is extremely potent. Men more often chase women rather than the other way around. Men are often blinded from reason by sexual desire and live in near constant sexual deprivation. That’s where the attitude of angst, smugness, and defensiveness comes from. Hormones. Women do and can have a potent sex drive, but it is not the same as that of a man. It just isn’t. Women do not have to try quite as hard as men to land sexual opportunities and they don’t feel the urge quite as often, so men (who want it pretty much all the time) have their work cut out for them.
I am a woman and a feminist. I don’t like this situation but no matter how hard I try to deny it, it is there. It doesn’t make it right for men to take their chronic sexual frustration out on women, but the frequently do. That is their challenge to bear in a society where we behave in a “civilized” fashion and the males of the species do not have a socially acceptable right to the bodies of the females. We, at least in the United States, tend not to be polygamous either.
Women are very scrutinizing because they can and should be. Their evolutionary desire stems not from spreading their seed to as many men as possible, but to have many children with the healthiest, best male they can find. So, they have the evolutionary tendency to refuse many males until the best one comes along. If this is true, it is also unfair. Her burden to bear is to do her best to ward off unwanted sexual advances.
There are instances where women have the upper hand — when men want sex. There are instances where men have the upper hand — when women want children. It is up to both men and women to control these urges for the greater safety and benefit of society, because this is the type of world we have made for ourselves. There is a time and a place for both sex and children and I’d like to think we know how to use that valuable human intellect that so many of us are proud of to know the difference.
Of course, this is evolutionary psychology which frequently feeds the world lines of bullshit that seek to keep us in our 1950s gender roles, promoting some idealistic nuclear family that has never really existed in history, but that is a different comment for a different blog post.
@Beta – I like the balance and level headed nature of what you said. I believe I would have said it much the same about 10 years ago. I’m not 35 and I feel that many of the generalizations of my 20s are not relevant in my 30s. With my hormones finally settling down and the hormones of my female counter parts picking up, the landscape has changed more than I expected. The most striking for me is watching women I’ve known for years deal with intense sexual urges for the first times. I have friends who have moved into poly lifestyles because the female’s desires suddenly exceeded the males. Still, with the way you’ve obviously tried to understand the full scope of the issue and the evolutionary background behind our motives, you have most definitely earned my respect. Thank you for your level headed comment. It is appreciated.
“Her demands amount to 1) don’t sexually assault me; 2) don’t contact me when I ask you not to contact me; and 3) don’t pester me when my body language signals I want to be left alone. She is not saying that men don’t have a right to occupy the same public spaces as women. She is not saying that she has the right to pepper spray you if she isn’t in the mood to talk to you. And she is definitely not accusing all men of being rapists. ”
Thank you Eric I did not get the same impression of the article that Zaskoda apparently did.
1. The student/teacher analogy seemed quite a far reach to domination/control. I also didn’t get any oppressive feelings then again perhaps I don’t feel oppressed when someone wants to give me their opinion on something.
2. I also got this was preventing being a victim rather than holding the stance of being a victim.
3. “She is justifying her behavior with the false fear that all men are rapists. “…yeah I didn’t get that since she never stated, suggested, or implied all men were rapists. All she stated was that I don’t know whether you’re a rapist or not because I don’t know you. Just like I don’t know whether that girl walking past me likes anal or not because I don’t know her.
I also find his AFC references unnecessary rambling based on the authors own negativity and emotional response to the article.
I also didn’t find you arguing but merely asking him how he got this impression when everything in the article suggest otherwise.
You probably won’t ever see this but I just got emailed this and the guys wanted to know how did this author get that impression from the article.
Had to comment knowing there was a guy out there who didn’t get Zaskoda’s impression.
@udolipixie: Your analogy in #3 would be more accurate if you also assumed that the girl did, in fact, enjoy anal and then proceeded to treat her as if she did until she proved that she didn’t. It is a shame, although no surprise, that the AFC reference was lost on you. Thanks for taking the time to read and respond.
Brilliantly done!